Graham Hancock | Woody Hayday | Blog

2014 Review

Woody — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 12:47:02 +0000

As last year falls away and a new year rolls in, I’d like to share with you a glance back at 2014. This will be my last post on this blog, as it moves over to WoodyHayday.com.

Landmarks, Happenings of Note 2014

Writing this list, I can hardly believe that all this happened in the past 365 days. I am very grateful, and hope for many more such years.

First draft of second novel and 8th edit of first novel, launched fiction page, failed to finish first novel
London Book Fair
2nd in UK Catan Championship in May, 4th in Catan @ UK Mind Sports Olympiad
Got allotment in June, plenty of gardening fun
Visited Ardley, Cambridge, Dartmoor, Peterborough, Plymouth, Salisbury, Wales
Built computer with brother for his birthday
USA in July, Seattle, Portland, Yosemite, San Francisco
Proposed to Alice atop of Glacier Point in Yosemite
WDS2014
VegFest Vegan Conference
World Catan Championship in Berlin, placed 39th overall
Managed event as volunteer at St Albans Literary Festival
Saw Ibrahim Maalouf perform at Southbank Center
Saw Akala perform The Ruins of Empires
Meditation Classes
Flotation Tank sessions
Made fresh pasta, pizza, jam, crumble, strudel etc.
Veggie August
Designed ‘Nut Bars’ for reliable organic food source
Gave up refined sugar
Advised on first full launch of theme @ EpicPlugins
Advised SmugPup and helped launch
Pivoted EverClients, wrote a new vision
Wrote 10+ WordPress plugins, mostly as Joint Ventures
Sold nearly 1k copies in 5 days in one JV launch
Sold several domains, registered far too many more
Many great meet-ups, meals, evenings spent with friends and family

EverClients – Pivoted to Serve Good-Willed Freelancers

Books, Podcasts, Talks, Videos

In 2014 I read 25+ books and skim-read several others. I’m happy to say that I abandoned several books before I hit their half-way mark, letting crappy books go in preference of better writing. Life’s too short. John Steinbeck, Huxley, Hemingway, and the amazing Frank Herbert lit up my year. Having never read such fiction, I have been blessed by finding as many great works in a single year as I have. I also really enjoyed The Little Prince and Stoner, who both hide life lessons under their respectively different hats.

Through non-fiction I continued to study Stoicism; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius read like an operating system update for my mind, ushered in by the sturdy The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and wholly reinforced by the sweeping greatness that is Mastery by Robert Greene. I’ve found that a mixture of Stoicism and Buddhism blends well and always seems to wrench me from whatever foul mood or false perception I may get stuck in. I look forward to continuing to explore these, and other philosophies.

In June I secured an allotment, and as a result I mixed in ~10 gardening books and plenty of documentaries on the subject of growing food. Monty Don has proven the most apt teacher, with a focus on organic growing, and plenty of worldly experience (see Zen gardens episode of Around the World in 80 Gardens). The River Cottage Veg Patch book was also very useful.

Lastly, and of significant note, there has been a few extra voices which have really affected me at the close of 2014. George Orwell jumped out of the page at me in Why I Write, slapping me in the face with a satirical, but honest glance at the English persona of 50 years past, instilling in me a strong desire to follow suit, to write more, and to do my share of ripping at the illusionary veil of the herd. Akala added inspiration with his excellent short narrative in The Ruins of Empires, (which was wicked to see performed live). Thoreau recently added even more weight to the desire to finish my novel, though reading Orwell and hearing Akala has given most form to my intent, with their modern unrelenting focus on the truth at the crux of man. The voices of these men, along with Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and such, have deeply impacted me this year, all for the better.

Dune by Frank Herbert
Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupery
Stoner by John Williams
The Kingkiller Chronicles: The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Slaine: The Horned God by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley (2000AD)
Ark Royal by Christopher Nuttal
The Ruins of Empires by Akala
Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass by Harold Gatty
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Mastery by Robert Greene
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Make Your Mind an Ocean by Lama Yeshe
Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie
Tribes by Seth Godin
What I learned losing a million dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
A Biography of Alexander Bell by unknown
Didn’t read Meet you in hell by Les Standiford (on Carnegie, over dramatized)
Skim-read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk (shallow)
The Complete Gardener by Monty Don
Veg Patch by Mark Diacono (River Cottage book)
Skim-read several other allotment/gardening books
Grammar for Grownups by Katherine Fry and Rowena Kirton (grammar was useful, examples painfully bleak)
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
How to market a book by Joanna Penn
On Writing by Stephen King
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Why I Write by George Orwell
Started reading “Where I lived, and what I lived for” by Thoreau
Wrote reviews for all books on Goodreads

Worth Watching/Listening to

I’ve watched plenty of documentaries, interviews and stand-up comedy this year, here’s a few of my favourites:

Stick to the plan?

This time last year I made a plan for 2014, and though I had the best intentions, I’ve not achieved a whole lot of it. But that’s okay; failing is part of the process. Of my 7 goals, I’ve partly achieved 3 and failed at the others. I’ve gladly found a few great people who I’d call mentors as much as friends, had a solid year advising EpicPlugins, and very nearly won the UK Catan Championship (came 2nd, got sent to Berlin World Championships, then placed 39th). It’s been a ride. This year I’ll tackle my year plan a bit differently, opting for fewer firm goals and an overall direction rather than specifics.

In the spirit of introspection, I’ll hammer out some highs and lows below, but overall I am glad for both.

What Worked & Highs

I’ve made less money this year than previous years, but I’m happier. This is a marked change in my outlook which I am happy to note. Culture and the people around me are as important as any economic success, probably more important. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Thoreau is right, and it’s taking a few years to steer my ship true. I end the year in no debt, in little positive balance, but still I am all the more enriched by the words and sentiment I’ve been lucky enough to have absorbed.

Here are a few highlights which make me smile from 2014:

Love, Friends & Family
Great books
Persistent Meditation (160 day chain & classes)
Yosemite National Park & proposing atop a mountain
Index cards for organisation (hat tip to Ryan Holiday & Tim Ferriss)
Giving up refined sugar (watch Fed Up and give up!)
Successful Joint Ventures
Networking, saying yes, and meeting awesome people
Pivoting my company away from money-chasing toward service

What Didn’t Work

For 2015 I’ll be honing my plans, because although this stuff didn’t come together, I see most of them as a failure in planning. Those that I’ve failed at for other reasons are just good learning. I should be so lucky to fail this much in 2015

Novel not published – It wasn’t ready, but I’ve now done my homework and will attack it again in 2015, watch this space.
Creating a SaaS/WordPress plugins for the money – I could of noticed the hints from my subconscious that I was veering away from my true intent, but I soldiered on trying to force the market to love the product, rather than trying to serve people. Months of work created a good product for a tiny, unaware market. I’ve since pivoted to a new, wholesome vision, and will be building a product for the people in 2015.
Health – Loads of colds, flu’s and hints of my childhood asthma. My immunity is low and my desk-time suffered. After much time wasted at the GP I’ve taken my health thoroughly into my own hands, improving diet and eliminating potential causes. I’ve finally come to a realisation that SBS is likely the main influence, and that my body is particularly reliant on clean air. Thanks to my Withings scales I was able to identify that my modern apartment actually has unhealthy levels of CO2, and that, in fact is a major problem.
Frayed attention – I’ve had this problem for years, but in 2014 it reached fever pitch when I noticed I had over 100 tabs open in Chrome, (I’m thankful for the RAM in this pc). This is just one symptom of a larger failure to organise. Another symptom is my indiscriminate creation of side-projects. I’ve built many, including web-apps to budget my time, but ironically not used or finished them due to a feeling of lack of time. This feeling is without basis, I’ve filled my time very meaningfully, and ought to simply clean up after myself and discriminate more with side-projects.

Summary

2014 was a foundational year for me. More than ever I’ve chosen what to spend my time doing, and through discriminative study I’ve been able to dispel much illusion and chaff. I am beginning to see the ways in which I can help others best, while feeding myself, and truth-seeking. I am grateful for all who have shared this with me, and look forward to elaborating on this base in 2015.

I leave you with two formative videos, and some photos. Hope to see you in 2015!

The post 2014 Review first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

2013 Annual Review

Woody — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 13:06:14 +0000

2013 was a turbulent year for me, but a great one. Tons of experiments, growth and realisations. Building upon the habit started last year with my 2012 review I’ll share some highlights of my close-of-year self analysis below. My review of 2013 turned into a mammoth document again, I’d been saving up thoughts and lists and it’s taken a few days, still, I enthuse you to try reviewing your time, it’s a worthwhile process and gives useful insight.

Note: With big intent for 2014 I will be moving to a new blog where I can be more focused and share only the big great/painful stuff, it’ll focus on concious self development and will be the future home of this kind of post. Visit WoodyHayday.com for up to date info on this. For now, back to last year:

Books

In 2013 I read 2x more books than in 2012, I’ve been intentionally amping up my reading. 2013 was a fantastic year for inspiration and looking back over the list of titles I’m glad to say that most were solid reads. Autobiographies gave me great inspiration for living and learning, with a smattering of modern thought tethering it all to today. I was initially looking for role models I could gleam advice from, seeking to replicate – but I ultimately found so much more in a lot of these books.

Here’s my 2013 pick, I can’t recommend these enough:

The Authentic Swing – Steven Pressfield. Epic reading for any writer.
Andrew Carnegie Autobiography and Gospel of Wealth. Inspiring autobiography, though I was told by the museum guy at the Carnegie Birthplace Museum in Dunfermline (I visited this year!) that the book Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw is far more accurate, as the family published the former after Carnegies death and so it’s edited with rose tinted glasses.
My Life and Work – Henry Ford. Epic story of perseverance, a wealth of information for any modern production business/entrepreneur, especially software houses.
My Inventions – Nikola Tesla. Tesla is a total hero. This autobiography is made up of essays originally published in a magazine, he talks at length about the concious and imagination. A great man, I shall definitely read more.
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells. Reading great literature is rewarding, even more so when it’s an authors first book and it happens to be amazing. Reading the quick preface at the start of this book was inspiring to me as a writer.
The Art of Learning – Josh Waitzkin. Dudes amazing, just read it.
Psycho Cybernetics – Maxwell Maltz. More interesting stuff on the concious/subconscious. I’ve developed some useful practices from this one.
Plato’s Symposium. There is some fantastic philosophy in this book, on love and education and learning.
The Richest Man in Babylon I’ll reread this book every year. Keep your revenue streaming!
$100 Startup – Chris Guillebeau. If your building product online, read this.
Rights of Man – Thomas Paine.
Purple Cow – Seth Godin. Be different as a core principle.
Startup Playbook. Hundreds of good coffee-table nuggets.
John Maynard Keynes Biography. Interesting character was Keynes!
Four Hour Work Week (4HWW). Another annual read. This year I looked at 4HWW with fresh eyes. I keep reminding myself that Ferriss wrote it after a fairly big financial success, and that the first big hit might take longer hours. I’m building Efficacy into my days though despite this, I now work MED 6 hours in two 3 hour stints.
From third world to first – Lee Kuan Yew. Long, dry but interesting. Learn how a modern government could work. Certainly none of them work effectively from my point of view, but there’s elements here which could improve them ten fold, if we can get enough determined men like Lee Kuan Yew to take office.
Without Their Permission – Alexis Ohanian. Dude co-founded reddit, you have to read what he has to say A pleasant book with a good call to action and a solid message.

[None of these are affiliate links.]

Talks, Podcasts, Videos, Music

Glad to have found all of these. Thanks to the friends who’ve shared links and the authors that have lead me to find them. The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is the most coherent thing to my vision of my own existence I have found all year, props to Joe for having rational conversations that tip the balance to positive. Add Akala & Low Key to the mix and I see a future.

Seth Godin Q & A
Graham Hancock – The War on Conciousness (Banned TED talk)
The Pretotyping Manifesto
Chris Sacca Interview
Tim Ferriss on London Real (and this post made me smile)
Akala – Another Reason & Low Key – My Soul
Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, notably:
- Lorenzo Hagerty – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/lorenzo-hagerty
- Graham Hancock – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/graham-hancock-2
- Dave Asprey – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/dave-asprey
- Steven Pressfield – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/steven-pressfield-aubrey-marcus
- Stefan Molyneux – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/stefan-molyneux

Akala – Find No Enemy

Projects

2013 was a full year of “work”. I consulted for ~3 months, building several WordPress plugins and a few web app prototypes, after which I became CTO at SAM, building the MVP there. Towards the close of the year I’ve now reset my goals and started working on the future of StormGate and Woody Hayday, in business terms (I’m looking for software problems to fix & finishing my novel!)

Social Gallery – Social Gallery moved in to the Epic Plugins.com suite of WordPress plugins, it’s since gone on to continue to sell well and is constantly in the “top sellers this week” section on CodeCanyon. It’s now beaten 2k sales and is on its way to 3k.

SAM – Social Asset Management (samdesk.io) – I joined SAM as CTO in March 2013 at inception stage and spent six months building the first MVP. SAM is a platform for media professionals to find and manage Social Assets (tweets, instagram photos etc.) in a modern, coherent way. It’s at the leading edge of innovation in the market and I’m glad I took it to MVP. I got to stretch my legs with almost all of AWS, and up to date JS. I moved on from SAM in October but I am confident it’s going to be a big success, definitely one to watch. James (CEO/Co Founder) continues to be an inspiration.

Writing/Other/Futures – In the last part of 2013 I began experimenting with a few options. I started working towards releasing my sci-fi novel in 2014 (perhaps August – click here to get notified), but for bread and butter I’ve been working on some software projects (SaaS for freelancers, authors and many other ideas!). I also finalised a joint venture that will begin in January. I’m keen to keep a fairly open field until I find something which matches my desired conditions.

Travel

We didn’t intend to travel that much in 2013, what with moving house, twice. We started in Belgium, moved back to Hertfordshire and still fitted in West Wales, Edinburgh, Dunfermline (Carnegie!) Great Yarmouth, Amsterdam (IBC2013) and finished the year in Romania. I couldn’t think of a better place to spend some time than Sinai with good friends! Now we are back in the home counties we are having lots of great evenings out in London and a few good talks too, it was a highlight of 2013 to go to four Akala gigs, his last featuring Low Key especially.

Time Management

In 2012 I started logging time I spend on a computer against projects. This was in part for consultancy billing but developed into a total analysis of my time spent. In 2013 I logged every minute I spent at a computer, tagging the time against a project (I used Toggl, which is excellent.) The process was interesting, as are the results. Doing this is definitely a solid step towards efficacy in your everyday life.

Time logged: 2871 Hours 54 Minutes

Or: Average 55 hours a week / 8 hours a day!

Here’s the distribution of my time – the big blue section is SAM, the other projects seem to share out quite evenly!

Email took up way less time than I had expected, totalling around 53 hours (just over an hour a week!) – I had been purposely lean on this in 2013, trying to avoid all “busy work”. Success.
“Lunch Reading” took up a bigger chunk than I had expected, though was still less than most people traditionally spend on lunch breaks.
I spent more time in the gym than I remembered!
I spent less than 100 hours playing computer games (Command and Conquer, Battlefield) – Again I was trying to keep lean here.
Several little projects produced fantastic returns per hour overall. I wonder how this scales.

2013 Summary

2013 was a long year. I’ve shown a fraction of it here, but the years busy turbulence has stretched time and stretched me. I happily chalk the to’s and fro’s of 2013 up to necessary change, it’s been bold but I’m in a better place because of it.

We’ve moved house twice, one of those times was across two countries. I built a hardcore MVP, a log cabin, several app prototypes, landing pages, documents, desks and relationships. I sold Social Gallery, I mentored. I blew the dust off my sci-fi novel and started re-editing. I hope these achievements will reinforce in me my capacity to build, deliver, persevere. I am not an idle man. Achieving my intent may take me several attempts in micro, but in macro it’ll resolve. As I ended last year thinking on “persistence” so do I this year. Persistence and Perseverance will mark 2014 as the foundational year to my next era.

I’m grateful for all 2013’s happenings and challenges as much as its successes. Above all else I’m grateful to my family, friends, to Alice and to my unknowing inspirations & life guides: Carnegie, Ferriss, Ford, Guillebeau for their awesome business minds. Tesla, Waitzkin and Pressfield for reminding me to be me. Joe Rogan, Munger, Molyneux, Hancock for their needed rational address. Akala, Low Key & Braintax for their soulful reminders to do good.

I’ll not say anything about 2014 yet, but I’ll leave you with my thoughts at the close of this year, these are personal, but I wanted to share them anyway.

Stay True to your Self Image (You have no choice, ultimately, the subconscious will make you. The alternative is distress.)
Plan for Chaos
Take Big Decisions Slowly
People can be Mediocre & Corruptible, but the world does have Good
What seems disparate, fragmented or hard in the micro can make sense in the macro
Have the next project rolling before finishing the current
To stay content I have to channel my hyper amounts of energy effectively
Floatation Tanks Kick Ass.
Let it go. Discipline.

Have an epic 2014, do good and be your awesome self.

The post 2013 Annual Review first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.